Lights and Sirens

by Lisa Henry

  “Maybe you shouldn’t hit anyone next time,” Caroline from Mundingburra suggested.

  The guy stared at her like she was asking him to flap his arms and fly.

  “Oh, great,” Sean muttered as Kate and Hayden approached the scene. “Look who’s here.”

  Right. Because on Friday, Hayden and Matt had hated one another. Matt felt a rush of warmth at Sean’s solidarity, and ducked his head to hide his smile. When he glanced up again, Hayden caught his gaze and winked. Heat rose on the back of Matt’s neck, and he raised his eyebrows at Hayden in what he hoped communicated Really? At work? Although of course Hayden wouldn’t give a fuck about that.

  Matt turned his attention to one of the combatants, while Kate and Hayden dealt with the guy with the split lip and the bloody nose.

  “Hey!” And suddenly the other guy was trying to push in the queue. “What about my knuckles?”

  “Back off, mate,” Hayden said, his voice firm. “Sit down. We’ll get to you.”

  Kate was pressing a dressing to the injured man’s mouth.

  “. . . and then Muzza just started chucking punches,” the guy talking to Matt said.

  Muzza? Matt tried hard to not to prejudge people, but come on.

  “Back off!” Hayden said again, an edge to his tone this time.

  Matt held up a hand to forestall the guy he was speaking with, and went and stood by Hayden’s side. The guy with the busted knuckles—Muzza—was red in the face and getting more belligerent by the second.

  “Problem?” Matt asked him.

  “Yeah!” Muzza spat on the ground by Hayden’s boots. “I’m injured, and this arsehole won’t help me.”

  “You’ve gotta wait your turn,” Matt said firmly. “You can either sit down and shut up and they’ll take a look at you here when they get the chance, or you can go and wait in a cell in the watchhouse. Your call.”

  Muzza grumbled, but stepped back and sat down heavily on the edge of the gutter.

  Matt held Hayden’s gaze for a moment, and Hayden nodded and flashed him a quick smile.

  Matt turned back to the guy he’d been speaking to before, keeping half an eye on Muzza to make sure he behaved himself. Kate was still dealing with the victim when Hayden turned his attention to Muzza and his knuckles.

  “Ouch!” Muzza exclaimed as Hayden examined his hand. “Fucking watch it!”

  “Hey!” Matt closed the distance between them, just in case. “How about you pull your head in and let the ambos do their job?”

  Muzza curled his lip up, and stared at Matt, and then at Hayden, and then at Matt again. Then he snorted, and glared up at Hayden. “Why’s this copper all over my fuckin’ arse?”

  “He’s just doing his job.” Hayden’s tone was calm.

  “Fucking coppers.”

  “Sure.” Hayden caught Matt’s gaze briefly, and pressed his mouth into a thin line. “This is gonna sting, okay?”

  He did something with a gauze pad that made Muzza flinch and recoil from his attention.

  “Fuck!” Muzza wrenched his arm back, fingers curling into a fist. “You fucking arsehole!”

  Hayden was already stepping back, palms held up, as Matt moved in. Muzza swung a clumsy punch as he launched himself to his feet, and Matt caught him by the arm before it landed. He twisted Muzza’s arm up behind his back, and, with Sean materialising beside him to help, shoved the man down onto his knees, and then onto his stomach on the patchy grass on the footpath.

  Matt wrenched Muzza’s arm up further, and knelt on his back while Sean fumbled with the cuffs.

  “Call my boyfriend an arsehole again,” he said, digging his knee into Muzza’s kidney, “and I’ll make sure you’re charged with every offence I can think of.”

  Muzza thrashed and grunted.

  Hayden grinned.

  Kate and the crews from Mundingburra stared.

  And Sean, wide-eyed, dropped the cuffs.

  The gossip beat Matt and Sean back to the station, which was no surprise. The gossip didn’t have to swing by the watchhouse, charge Muzza with assaulting and obstructing a police officer, and then hand the entire thing over to the Mundingburra crew, who were taking the statement from victim. The gossip also didn’t stop to pick up fish and chips for dinner from that place on Bayswater Road because it was starving by that point.

  Matt and Sean pulled up at the rear of the station, their headlights throwing a wide arc of light against the grey brickwork, then climbed out of the car and headed for the back door.

  The station at night was always more relaxed than during the day. At night, the chances of running into an inspector or some other commissioned officer were slim to none. Most of the offices were locked up, the lights off. Steve, the shift supervisor, was behind the front counter with Lynette—she was pregnant, and on light duties until she went on maternity leave—watching a cat video online.

  Busy evening then.

  Matt followed Sean into the dayroom, where a bank of lockable pigeonholes divided the room. Matt saw something taped to his. He set his fish and chips down on the nearest desk, and crossed to his pigeonhole. There was a small twist of unease in his gut that tightened as he approached…and then evaporated with the snort of laughter that escaped him.

  Someone had printed out a cartoon paramedic, drawn a large heart around him in pink highlighter, and taped it to Matt’s pigeonhole.

  There was no insult, no barb in it that Matt could see. He was a part of this joke, not the punchline.

  He left the paper taped where it was, and returned to the desk, and to his fish and chips.

  He and Sean got stuck into their paperwork while they ate. Paperwork was still Sean’s bugbear. It took him almost an hour to work halfway though the Objection to Bail for Muzza. Matt’s phone buzzed with another text from Hayden, and he opened it to see a selfie from Hayden that looked like it had been taken at the ambulance bay at the hospital. Hayden was scowling at the screen, holding up half a bottle of blue Powerade.

  Matt had no idea what that was about, so he called. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” There was a smile in Hayden’s voice. “Kate drank my Powerade when I was taking a leak. I want you to charge her with theft and arrest her.”

  “I’m not going to do that.

  “And if you could rough her up too, that would be great.”

  “I’m not going to do that either.”

  Hayden exhaled heavily. “What’s the point of having a copper as a boyfriend if you won’t arrest people for me?”

  Heat rose in Matt’s face, and he lowered his voice. “So, um, about that…”

  Hayden laughed. “Have you been shitting yourself for the past few hours that I’ve been shitting myself because you called me your boyfriend at work?”

  “Little bit, yeah.”

  Hayden laughed again. “I like it.”

  Warmth spread through Matt. A cautious kind of hope bubbled up inside him. As new and fragile as this thing between them was—he and Hayden barely knew one another yet—it felt good that they were both on the same page. It had taken one crazy weekend to prove they had chemistry. It would take longer to prove if they had anything more than that, but he liked that they were taking that step together.

  “Me too,” he said.

  He was aware of Sean sitting at the desk beside his, tapping away at the keyboard and pausing every once in a while to eat. Sean didn’t appear to be actively listening in, but he must have been hearing every word Matt was saying. Matt turned around in his chair slightly, as though showing Sean his back would give him any privacy. The illusion was enough for now.

  “How’s your shift going?” Hayden asked him.

  “Yeah, not bad. Still finishing the paperwork for the Hyde Park job.”

  “Really? Wow, you guys are slow workers.” Hayden’s tone was teasing.

  Matt smirked, and rose to the challenge. “Unlike you, we don’t get to just dump our customers at the hospital and then fuck off again.”

  Hayden laughed, and
there was a faint burst of static. “Hang on a second.” It sounded as though Hayden was getting a call on his radio. It was a few moments before he returned to the phone. “Gotta go. What time are you finishing tonight?”

  “Ten, hopefully,” Matt said. “Fingers crossed. How about you?”

  “Same. Want to meet up for a coffee?”

  Matt had a sudden flash to some ad he’d seen as a kid. He couldn’t even remember the brand of coffee it had been for, but the man walked the woman home. She invited him up for coffee, and he checked the brand before he agreed. Matt had been young enough that he hadn’t known what his mum snorted about when she watched the ad. She was just going to make the guy coffee, right?

  “Yeah,” he said, a flicker of arousal igniting at the memory of Sunday night. He wondered if Hayden would be in the mood for a repeat. “Coffee sounds good.”

  “I’ll see you then.” Hayden ended the call.

  Beside Matt, Sean worked away, keys clicking.

  Matt ate his fish and chips and wished the rest of the shift away. It felt odd to have something to look forward to other than going home and climbing into bed. Well, the climbing into bed part was still in the picture, only it was a lot more exciting imagining climbing into Hayden’s bed than his own.

  Matt sent a couple of further texts to Hayden throughout the shift. Sometimes he got an answer straight away, and sometimes he had to wait a while. He and Sean were sent to a traffic accident just after nine on Woolcock Street, but it was a different ambulance crew that attended, and Matt felt a strange pang of disappointment.

  It had been a long time since Matt had been in a relationship. He’d forgotten that odd breathlessness that came at the start. He’d forgotten the butterflies and the spontaneous smiles that came just from thinking about the other person. He’d forgotten how invigorating a new relationship could feel.

  Matt and Sean ended up being sent to a domestic violence incident just before knock off, and landed some overtime out of it. He sent an apology to Hayden, and got a winking face in return that he didn’t really know how to interpret, but figured it was an acknowledgement they’d have to postpone coffee. It was close to midnight when Matt finally left the station. He’d parked his car in the council car park off Sturt Street. The lighting, as always was broken, and Matt’s boots crunched against shards of glass as he trudged up the incline of the car park.

  There was a figure leaning on the back of Matt’s car.

  “Hey,” Matt said, a smile spreading across his face. Hayden was waiting for him to finish work.

  A long-legged curlew froze for a moment, and then scuttled across his path.

  “Hey.” Hayden straightened up. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead of his uniform. “So, coffee?”

  Matt shrugged. “I’m pretty sure the only place open now is Macca’s, or one of the servos.”

  Hayden smiled. “Guess you’d better come home with me then.”

  “Guess I’d better.”

  Hayden’s building was only two short city blocks from the station, so Matt locked his bag in the boot of his car, and they walked it. There weren’t many people about at this hour, and nothing much open on the route between the station and Hayden’s place to draw them out. His building overlooked Ross Creek and the parklands on either side of it. That usually meant groups of itinerants hanging around, but at this hour they were either all sleeping or they’d moved up to Bulletin Square to sit outside the Night Owl.

  The night was warm, but the breeze was cool. Summer wasn’t here just yet, with its humid days and nights when the heat pressed down heavily on the city.

  Matt and Hayden walked close together, shoulders bumping companionably. Matt thought about taking Hayden’s hand, but he didn’t know if they were there yet. They were boyfriends—and yeah, that word filled him with a bubbling warmth—but he didn’t know if their expectations matched up. Maybe Hayden wasn’t a fan of holding hands. All of that—his quirks, his foibles, his weird little habits that might one day drive Matt insane—were still unknown, still waiting to be discovered.

  They reached Hayden’s building. The foyer was empty at this hour, and so was the elevator. When the doors rolled open on his floor, the lights in the hallway were dim.

  Hayden unlocked the door to his apartment, and turned on the light.

  Matt followed him in.

  The air inside the apartment was still and stale, and Hayden walked through the living area and pushed open the door to the balcony. The breeze filtered inside, rustling the takeaway menus stuck to the kitchen refrigerator.

  “Beer?” Hayden asked as he turned back to look at Matt. The corner of his mouth quirked up in a grin. “Unless you really did want a coffee?”

  “A beer would be great.”

  Matt glanced around the apartment. He hadn’t taken much of it in on Sunday night, too eager to get to Hayden’s bed. The apartment was clean and neat. There weren’t any personal touches to the living area, and absolutely no mess. Even the kitchen bench was clear of any clutter. The apartment was comfortable, but as impersonal as a hotel room or a display home. One of the occupants had to be a neat freak, and Matt had seen Hayden’s bedroom—it wasn’t him.

  Hayden took two beers from the fridge and he and Matt went and sat out on the balcony. A few yachts bobbed in the creek, lights bouncing off the water. The night air smelled of salt. It was quiet. The faint wail of a siren rose somewhere in the distance, but the wind stole it away.

  “This is a great view,” Matt said, leaning back in his seat.

  “I like it.” Hayden’s voice was soft. “It’s nice to come and sit out here after a shitty shift and just take the time to breathe, you know?”

  “Yeah.” Matt could get used to a view like this one.

  The beer was cold, and tasted crisp. Matt stole a glance at Hayden and caught him looking back. He ducked his head to hide his smile, and Hayden’s fingers brushed against his own. Matt turned his palm upward, and Hayden laced their fingers together loosely. Matt’s skin prickled, and heat flared. He caught Hayden’s gaze again, and this time he held it.

  Hayden raised his eyebrows. “If you finish that beer, you probably shouldn’t drive.”

  “Probably not,” Matt agreed easily, even though one beer wouldn’t put him over the limit. He rubbed his thumb over Hayden’s, and figured that Hayden would appreciate his forwardness. “Plus, you could always make me that coffee for breakfast.”

  Hayden laughed, the sound bright and clear, and then leaned in close. “Yeah, I suppose I could.”

  Hayden’s mouth tasted like beer when they kissed, and the lights on the creek glittered in the distance.

  CHAPTER

  NINE

  A week of shared arvo shifts led to crossing paths on the occasional job, meeting up once for a meal at the Walkabout, and Hayden falling asleep with Matt beside him on two different nights. This thing with Matt felt easy, and Hayden distrusted it because of that. He wasn’t entirely bitter and cynical—not yet—but there had to be a catch, right? There was always a catch.

  Friday afternoon’s shift started with a call to Castletown, and an elderly woman who’d had a turn in the food court. She was more upset by all the fuss than by her dizzy spell and fall, and Hayden turned on the charm to get her onto the gurney. She was as frail as a bird. Hayden could have wrapped the blood pressure cuff twice around her stick-thin arm. Her blood pressure was low, and she admitted that she couldn’t remember when she’d last had anything to eat. She also couldn’t remember why she’d come to the shops.

  Dementia, probably. If it was, it was clearly only the early stages. She was a little fuzzy-headed—and apologetic for it—but she was clean and dressed neatly, with her hair brushed and her nails trimmed. She might not have remembered why she came to the shops, but she remembered her name and her address and told Hayden that she had a daughter down in Bowen.

  “I think I’d feel better if I could have a cup of tea.” Her voice wavered, reed thin, and Hayden had to
lean in to hear her over the bustle of the food court: the voices, the cheery music, the obligatory screaming toddlers and the echoing P.A. system.

  “I’m sure someone at the hospital will make you a cuppa,” Hayden promised.

  Mrs. Mann clutched her handbag tightly as Hayden and Kate wheeled her toward the escalator.

  Hayden rode in the back with Mrs. Mann while Kate drove. He sat beside the gurney, filling in his paperwork and chatting to Mrs. Mann. He had to reassure her every few minutes that it wasn’t a bother, and that she wasn’t wasting their time. Once at the hospital they wheeled Mrs. Mann into A&E and got her settled into the care of the nursing staff there.

  Hayden ran through his handover with the nursing staff: the patient’s name, and age, and her presentation. Her vital signs, and her medications and medical history. Then her social situation—the fact she lived alone but had a daughter in Bowen—and the belongings and valuables she had with her when they’d transported.

  Once Mrs. Mann was checked over, a social worker would follow up with her next of kin and make sure there was someone to care for her at home. Sometimes people fell through the gaps, like that old man from West End last week who was already decomposing by the time his neighbours noticed, but Hayden hoped Mrs. Mann wouldn’t be one of them. If her daughter wasn’t in a position to look after her, then hopefully she’d see about putting her into a home where someone would at least make certain she remembered to eat.

  All the talk of a cup of tea had made Hayden crave a coffee, but he and Kate bypassed the break room at the hospital and headed back out. There were better options for coffee out on the road than from the machine in the break room.

  Kate drove, and Hayden flipped through the channels on the commercial radio, hunting for a decent song.

  “How are things going with Matt?” Kate asked as they crossed the bridge over Ross River.

  “Good.” Hayden chewed on the end of his pen for a moment and shrugged. “I think. I don’t know. I’m not planning the bloody wedding or anything.”